h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi all

Can someone tell me which keys to hold down while I start up so that I can eject a CD while starting up?

I'm on an ibook with OS 9.2.2


Also a link to a resource with an outline of the various starting up key options for would be wonderful. I'll go have a look online but I usually have difficulty finding what I want for some reason.



kea.

If my memory serves me correctly, which it may not ... the CD will eject during startup if you hold down the mouse button.

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. I'll try that out as soon as I get offline

Now, i know nothing of the system you describe, but don't most cd drives have a wee pin hole near the eject button that releases the drawer even if the power is off?

Oh sorry for butting in by the way- the convo just caught my eye in your space.. er, in a manner of speaking

"...a wee pin hole near the eject button..." - *what* eject button?

If you can eject it, you'll be doing better than the owners of the half-a-chrome- flat-screen iMacs. They can only eject through software, and some CDs with copy protection (e.g. Celine Dion) crash the OS so early in the boot-up that once you've inserted them, the machine needs to go back to the factory to have them removed!

WinnochTwo is correct also.


I found a page that gives detailed instructions by Symantec ...

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/num.nsf/docid/2002091117514811


Happy computing, Kea!

AW's link refers to an emergency eject hole in slot-loading iMacs... This is a new development; the first batch didn't have these, which is how the "stuck CD" situation came about. Never mind; Celine Dion fans deserve all they get...

I like *some* of her stuff. The rest grates my nerves.

, even.

My G4 at wo*k doesn't have any such pinhole. If it gets stuck, you're just S.O.L. (expletive-outta-luck)

Wow- lucky quess

Thanks for that - there is a pinhole by the button on my CD drive. I'd never noticed that before. The button on the ibooks only opens the drive if there is nothing in it.

Thanks for the link too .




kea.

My pleasure.

You might have to open the decorative cover to see the pinhole. It's on the CD drive itself, not on the Mac plastic.

But holding the mouse button immediately at start up ought to work. That's an old trick from the Mac 128k days when it was used to eject floppies, and Apple just kept it around. I use that to get CDs out of my cube all the time (that definitely does not have a pinhole).

Thanks, d'elephant! Should I ever find myself in the position of having a jambed CD, I'll know exactly where to search for my wee little hole.

That sounded sort of bad, didn't it?

It's the slot loading iMacs that have no pinhole, because it would be physically impossible in that kind of mechanism.

If it's the clamshell kind, you should be able to eject it (even with a disc stuck in) if you hit the normal eject button as soon as the machine goes "bong" on startup (before it tries to read from the drive).

My problem is the bit of plastic on the spindle has worked loose an can physically jam in the drive It's an old, tired laptop